Is it not silence that opens the door to our best work? How about that work you enjoyed so much and did so well? How did you prepare for that? Yes, I know all about the work you bluffed through and even managed to get a high record in, but that work you really enjoyed, how was that done? Is it not silence, too, that opens the door to our dearest and deepest companionships, our profoundest sorrows, our greatest joys? Anyway this wilderness silence is all worth while thinking about, is it not?
Why should this great silence, this friendly wilderness power be considered anti-social? Really, is it not most social? Does it not bring us all nearer together, sometimes even when we are afraid to be nearer to one another? Does it not make us all equal, making us aware of those profound things in life which we all have in common? Silence can say, can teach, what speech can never, to the end of the world, learn to express. It is safe to say that as soon as most lips are silent, then and then only do the thoughts and the soul begin to live, to grow, to become something of what they are destined to be, for as Maeterlinck says, silence ripens the fruits of the soul. Never think that it is unsociable people or people who don’t know how to talk who set such a value on silence. No, it is those who are able to talk best and most deeply, think best and most deeply, who, following the long trail, recognize the fact that words can never after all express those truths which are among us—no, neither love, nor death, nor any great joy, nor destiny can ever be expressed by word of mouth, by speech.
CHAPTER XVII
HOMEMADE CAMPING
It was our second day in camp,—a camp on the edge of the Maine wilderness. Around us were many lakes—ponds as the natives call them—Moosehead, Upper Wilson, Lower Wilson, Little Wilson, Trout Pond, Horse-shoe Pond, and a dozen others. About us on all sides were the forest-covered mountains, and burning fiercely, twenty miles distant, a large forest fire which filled the horizon with dense, yellow smoke.
From our camp, consisting of a red shanty, a log cabin in which I am now sitting, my dog beside me, thinking what I shall say to you about a remarkable family I saw, and, looking up at the cabin ceiling, its log ridge-pole and supports between which are birch bark cuts of trout and salmon caught in the lakes, of which I have spoken—from our camp we look out and down on a wonderful view. Immediately in front of the log cabin is a meadow, the last on the edge of this wilderness, then the serrated line of pointed firs, which marks the edge of the woods at the foot of the meadow. Beyond this line miles of tree-tops, pines, birches, maples, beeches, after that the shining lakes, and beyond them the mountains. There is not a house in sight. For that matter there is no house to be seen, not even a log cabin.
As was said, there is a meadow in front of the cabin, and over to the right beyond our view are two other meadows. In Maine—as far north as this, anyway—the farmers have only one crop of hay, and, when there is so much forest, and the winter is long, and cattle are to be fed, every meadow has to be counted upon for all it will bear of hay. It was a foregone conclusion that somebody would need and use the crop from the meadow down upon which my cabin looked.
And, sure enough, the second day we were in camp, along the road bumping and thumping over the big stones came a large hay wagon: behind it, rattling and jarring, a mowing machine and hay rake. But that hay wagon, what didn’t it hold? In the first place, there was the driver, then a big packing box, a tent rolled up, sacks of feed for the horses, a baby’s perambulator, three children, a woman, a hammock, a long bench, some chairs, including a rocking chair, and several small boxes, packed to overflowing with articles of various kinds. For an instant it looked as if they were house-moving, and then, recollecting that there was no house to which to move, I came to the conclusion that they were merely haying.